A Baby in the Bargain

Not because of Gideon Thatcher in particular.

Even though he was a man like that…

Chapter Two

“You’re late.”

“Sorry,” Gideon said to Jack Durnham, his best friend and second-in-command of the Thatcher Group. “Bad night. Too many things rolling around in my head. I didn’t fall asleep until about four this morning, and then I slept through the alarm. Maybe the boss won’t notice if we sneak into the office with our coats over our heads.”

“Good plan, boss,” Jack said with a laugh.

The two had been friends since middle school. They’d gone to college together, been each other’s best man at their weddings, and Jack had quit a lucrative job with a local engineering firm to come on board when Gideon had started the Thatcher Group. Technically Gideon was Jack’s boss but Gideon saw him more as a partner than an employee.

“What was rolling around in your head to keep you up?” Jack asked after they’d ordered.

“You won’t believe it when I tell you. But you first—how did your weekend with Sammy go?”

Jack grimaced and shook his blond head.

Sammy was his two-year-old son. Jack and his wife were recently separated and the three previous days were the first time Jack had had visitation with the toddler.

“Not great,” Jack said. “Tiffany is making everything as difficult as possible. I don’t know why—she’s the one who decided our marriage was stagnating and wanted out. But for some reason I get to be punished. After the seven weeks in Florida with her parents that kept me from seeing Sammy at all, she came back to Colorado Springs rather than Denver. It’s blackmail—if I want Sammy closer, I’ll have to pay for a place for her to live here. Otherwise, it’s an hour drive to the Springs to pick him up and an hour drive back to Denver to have him for the weekend. Then two more hours in the car for the return at the end of the visitation.”

Jack’s voice had gotten louder and angrier. Gideon could see that he needed to vent so he didn’t point out that this was the same thing Jack had ranted about in advance of the three-day weekend he’d taken with his son.

“How about the visit itself? How did that go?” Gideon asked.

“I know how you ended up over Jillie. So you probably think that I should just count myself lucky that I get to see Sammy at all. But, dammit, this is so lousy! Sammy is two! He took one look at me after so long apart, latched onto Tiffany’s leg and acted like I was a stranger. He cried when I took him, then glared at me the whole drive back to Denver. And to make things worse, once we got here and I needed to put him to bed, Tiffany hadn’t packed that blanket thing he sleeps with—”

“Oh, that’s bad!” Gideon commiserated. “Whatever it is they need to have with them when they go to sleep, they need to have.”

“Right. I had to load him back into the car—tired, crabby and hating me for taking him away from his mother—and go to three different Camden Superstores to try to find a blanket thing exactly like the one he has. Luckily I did, but by then he was overwrought, and he just kept crying for Tiffany and—”

“You were both miserable.”

“We were just getting back into the swing of things with each other by yesterday and I had to turn around and take him back,” Jack concluded.

“You’re right—that is lousy.”

“I’m sorry,” Jack apologized in a voice an octave lower than the one he’d been using. “Again, I know I’m better off than you are, but it still stinks.”

“Yeah, it does,” Gideon agreed. He could see clearly how much his friend was suffering and knew the feeling well. Too well. It served as a reminder of the reason for the decision he’d made for himself. The vow.

Their breakfasts arrived, and when the waitress had left Jack changed the subject.

“Okay, you know if you let me I’ll gripe about this all day. Now tell me what was rolling around in your head to keep you up last night.”

“Speaking of Camden Superstores…” Gideon said sarcastically, referring to his friend’s mention of them.

“I know how you feel about the Camdens, but sometimes we all have to use the stores that made them rich. Even you.”

Gideon avoided them but Jack was right, sometimes, in a pinch, he gave in and went into one of them.

“But how do we feel about taking Camden money for the Lakeview project…” he said.

Jack’s forkful of eggs stalled midair. “Huh?”

“When I came out of work last night there was a hot little number waiting for me on the sidewalk—January Camden. I’ve had some messages from her but I’ve been ignoring them. Apparently the Camdens want to make a donation to fund a park in Lakeview, in my great-grandfather’s name. They want to honor him.”

“Guilty-conscience money?” Jack guessed.

“That’s what I said.”

“So, I know the story…” Jack mused as if he were updating himself. “H. J. Camden was friends with your great-grandfather and your great-grandfather was Lakeview’s mayor, right? Back when Lakeview was a dying-out farm community with good proximity to Denver, Camden wanted to build warehouses and factories there. But Lakeview didn’t want to be turned into a warehouse and factory district, so Camden sweetened the deal—he said if he could build what he wanted there, he’d spearhead the development of Lakeview into a post-war suburban dream. New homes, the coming of big and small businesses, schools and parks—”

“And he got my great-grandfather to support his plan,” Gideon said. “He needed somebody who was well respected to go to bat for him. He needed influence with the city council—”

“Which—as mayor—your great-grandfather had.”

“And trusting their mayor, Lakeview signed on—they gave Camden the okay for the factories and warehouses.”

“But that was it for Camden,” Jack said. “Once he had what he wanted, he didn’t come through on the rest.”

“And my great-grandfather got the blame.”

“Along with all the retribution and the hardship that came with it and sifted down to your grandfather and your father and, ultimately, left you with things to deal with…” Jack nodded now that he knew they were on the same page. “You have good reason to feel the way you do about the Camdens. So what were you up all night doing? Thinking of ways to get even with them?”

“More like rehashing all the reasons I have for hating them. Fuming,” Gideon said, not telling his friend that he’d needed to focus on the anger because otherwise his mind kept wandering back to January Camden.

The first thing he’d noticed was all that espresso-colored hair bathed in golden streetlight, falling in waves well past her shoulders like a dark frame around skin as flawless and pure as fresh cream—that image had flashed through his mind and defused some of the fuming.

And so had recollections of high cheekbones and that thin, perfectly shaped nose that was just long enough to lend a hint of the exotic to her face. Of those full lips, lush and lovely and way, way too kissable-looking. Of eyes so blue—so intensely, brightly, blueberry-blue—that he’d been bowled over by them by the time he’d reached the fourth step down from his office…

And here he was again, lost in the memory of the memory that had kept him up last night.

He shook his head. “Anyway, no, I wasn’t thinking about getting even with them—it’s not like I’m obsessed with them, or with payback or something. But it also isn’t as if I want to get in bed with them, either…”

Where had that particular turn of phrase come from? And why had the picture of January Camden popped back into his brain along with it?

It’s a figure of speech and that’s all it is, he insisted to himself. It doesn’t have any hidden meaning.

Still he found himself feeling a few degrees warmer all of a sudden and fidgeting in his chair a little to evade the involuntary response that was going through him.

“I know you wouldn’t ever ‘get into bed’ with the Camdens,” Jack said. “But would that be what a donation from them was?”

“I don’t know,” Gideon said with a sigh. “I do like the idea of putting my great-grandfather’s name on something of value and service to Lakeview. And the Cam-dens sure as hell owe Lakeview.”

“So you’d be killing two birds with one stone?”

“Except that the stone belongs to the Camdens, and they can’t be trusted—my family history proves that,” Gideon added, showing just how much he was vacillating about this.

“Do you think it’s a trick of some kind?” Jack asked, as he finished with his breakfast and settled in with his second cup of coffee.

“I know I won’t let it be. And she said that I can set the terms.”

“So maybe this is on the up-and-up?” Jack suggested. “Maybe they really do just want to make up for what H.J. did?”

Gideon shrugged, showing his reservations.

“The Camdens are heavy into charity and benefits and good deeds now,” Jack pointed out. “Hospital wings, libraries, research labs, animal shelters. They’ve even made donations huge enough to be newsworthy in national and international disasters. Their name crops up with just about anything worthwhile that goes on these days. Could it be that this is a generation of new-and-improved Camdens?”

“New-and-improved Camdens?” Gideon parroted. “I might not be looking to get even but I also don’t know that I buy that, either. Don’t forget that H.J. came into Lakeview a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

“True. But your eyes are wide open when it comes to these people. And if their donation benefits a community they owe plenty to and your great-grandfather gets paid a little homage in the process, aren’t those two good things?”

“I’m thinking about it,” Gideon said evasively.

The waitress came to find out if they wanted anything. Jack took a refill on his coffee. Gideon just asked for the check.

“This is on me for keeping you waiting,” he told his friend. “But I’m gonna have to leave you while you finish your coffee—I need to get to that meeting with Lakeview Parks and Recreation.”

“Oh, right, I forgot about that. I’ll see you at the office when you get back.”

As Gideon fished in his wallet to leave the money for the check and a generous tip he said, “Don’t worry about things with Sammy. This is the roughest time. He’s still your son and you have every right to him, so it’ll work out.”

“Yeah,” Jack said glumly. “But it’ll never be the same.”

Gideon couldn’t refute that because he knew it was true. So he didn’t try.

He merely said he’d see Jack later and left, knowing what his friend was going through and feeling a wave of old pain himself at the thought.

That pain lasted until he got behind the wheel of his SUV and headed for Lakeview. The thought of Lake-view brought January Camden and what she’d proposed back to mind to distract him.

If he decided to take her up on her offer and had to have contact with a Camden, at least it would be with a Camden who was easy on the eyes.

She’d been some kind of liaison to send. A real attention-getter. He had to give them credit for that, at least.

And she’d weathered the storm he’d sent her way with composure—she got points for that. Dignity and composure. And style—she had that, too. Dignity, composure, style, beauty…

Okay, yes, January Camden was something, he admitted reluctantly.

But she was still a Camden.

And even though he didn’t remember seeing a wedding ring, she must be a married Camden. If that book that had fallen out of her purse was any indication, she was in starting-a-family mode.

The old pain swung back and hit him when that thought went through his head. Family. Babies. Kids…

And suddenly it wasn’t January Camden he was picturing but the little girl who had been his own daughter. If only for a while…

Jillie.

His little Jillie-bean…

All this time and it could still knock him as cold as a fist to the jaw…

And it occurred to him that he’d actually rather think about January Camden than about Jillie. About all the Camdens. He’d rather be mad than maudlin and de-pressed….

So think about the donation…he told himself.

But only about the donation and the lousy, stinking, underhanded Camdens.

Not about the way January Camden looked or carried herself.

Not about her blue, blue eyes.

Not about what might be going on in her personal life.

Just the donation the lousy, stinking, underhanded Camdens wanted to make to Lakeview.

And whether or not he was going to let it happen…

“Aren’t you guys having lunch with GiGi and me?” Jani asked Margaret and Louie, referring to Georgi-anna Camden by the nickname everyone used for her. Jani had come to her grandmother’s house hoping for time alone with GiGi. But Margaret and Louie Halibur-ton were more than GiGi’s house staff; they were the adopted members of the family who had helped GiGi raise her ten grandchildren. They continued to work and live on the estate, and to be important to GiGi and to all of the Camdens.

Because they were in the kitchen with GiGi when Jani arrived, she’d expected them to be staying for lunch, which meant she’d have to have a few words with her grandmother in private later. But after they’d all exchanged pleasantries, Louie announced that he and Margaret should be going.

“I’m being taken out to lunch,” Margaret said with delight on her lined face. “I’d say Louie was becoming a romantic in his old age but I think you’re grandmother put him up to it since he forgot our anniversary.”

“Nah! It was my idea,” Louie insisted.

“Better make it a long lunch, Louie, with a shopping spree afterward, or you’re never getting out of the doghouse,” GiGi advised him, laughing.

The camaraderie among the three older people was obvious. They were genuinely close friends and indispensable to each other.

“Yes, shopping—that’s a good idea,” Margaret said, although Jani wondered why it would appeal to the woman who mainly wore elastic-waistband slacks and either T-shirts or sweatshirts that always had messages printed on them.

Regardless, the couple said goodbye and went on their way, leaving Jani alone with her grandmother to sit at the breakfast nook that was large enough for fourteen people.

GiGi had made her special grilled-cheese sandwiches and tomato-basil soup. That was what they talked about as they began to eat.

But then Jani heard the sound of the front door closing, telling her that Margaret and Louie had left, so she moved on to the subject she’d come to discuss. The subject that was absolutely not to be shared outside the circle of the grandchildren and GiGi. Not even with Margaret and Louie.

Whatever misdeeds H. J. Camden had perpetuated, the family knew it was imperative to keep it quiet. Prominence and wealth made them targets, and they didn’t want to invite trouble.

“So I told you on the phone that I finally spoke to Gideon Thatcher,” Jani said.

“How did it go?” the elderly woman inquired.

“Not well. He hates us, GiGi,” Jani said, wasting no time getting to the point. “Decades and two generations between when H.J.’s promises to Lakeview fizzled out and now haven’t made it any better—this guy hates us as much as if he was the one H.J. used to get those warehouses and factories built.”

“Well, we are seeking out folks who got the short end of the stick from H.J.,” GiGi said calmly.

“But maybe I’m not the best one to deal with it right now, when I’ve started with the infertility endocrinologist and the wheels are finally in motion for a baby.”

Jani could see from the expression on Georgi-anna’s face—which still showed glimmers of her early beauty—that her grandmother was trying to contain her disapproval of the course Jani had set for herself.

“You’ve made it clear that that’s what you’re going to do come hell or high water but I still don’t agree with the rush,” GiGi said bluntly. “I know when you had that appendectomy at seventeen and they found out you have only one ovary—”

“One unusually small ovary,” Jani reminded. “Which means that from the get-go my chances for having a family are greatly reduced—you and I were both told that.”

“I know that since then you’ve been scared silly that you wouldn’t be able to have a baby at all.”

“Because they made it clear there were risks, especially if I waited too long. ‘The earlier the better’—that’s what they said. And now I’ve turned thirty! Thirty and with all those years wasted on Reggie. I can’t wait any longer, GiGi!”

“Eat some grilled cheese, tell me if there’s enough garlic in the mayo,” her grandmother advised.

Jani knew that was a diversion to keep her from getting too agitated. But it was difficult not to get agitated over this. Until now she’d followed the traditional route—she’d tried to find the right guy, get married, then have a family. The route her grandmother approved of.

But that route had led to a dead end and cost her precious time. Time she certainly didn’t have to waste.

So she wasn’t going to. She’d come to the firm conclusion that she had to bypass the step of finding another man to have a relationship with. She couldn’t afford the months, the years that a relationship required to blossom, to develop. She couldn’t afford the time it took to get to an engagement, a marriage. To only then pursue a pregnancy and have a baby. More years could be spent on that course.

Instead she’d decided to have a baby on her own. Here and now, without a husband. That’s what she’d made up her mind to do. And that was what she was going to do. Despite the fact that to seventy-five-year-old Georgianna it wasn’t merely unconventional, but bordered on scandalous.

“I’m just saying,” Jani reasoned, getting back to her initial point, “that maybe it would be better to give this particular deal with Gideon Thatcher to someone else because so much of my energy will be devoted to getting pregnant.”

Hmm…But why did the thought of her grandmother giving this job to one of her female cousins make her feel a little jealous, a little territorial?

Jani didn’t understand it.

But it was that feeling that prompted her to add, “Maybe one of the boys would be better…”

GiGi shook her head as she took a bite of her own sandwich. “I’m looking at it this way—let’s say you do get pregnant—”

“I will get pregnant. I have to. It’s my last chance.”

GiGi humored her. “Yes, well. Once you do, then you’ll be pregnant and dealing with that without even a husband to take care of you or help you—that wouldn’t be a time to send you out on one of these missions, would it? Then you’ll have a baby—on your own,” the elderly woman emphasized. “I won’t be able to ask you to leave a baby in order to spend time getting to know one of these people to find out how much damage was done and how we can make up for it, will I?”

GiGi had always been sharp as a tack and that hadn’t changed with age. She’d also always been a step ahead of all ten of her grandchildren, and Jani could see that was still the case. Apparently GiGi had anticipated her arguments and prepared her rebuttal.

“So now is the best time for you to do this. Maybe the only time you’ll be able to do it,” GiGi concluded.

Jani had to laugh a little at her own defeat. Her grandmother was right—once she was pregnant and had a baby, she wasn’t going to be in any position to do something like this. So rather than continue to fight it, she supposed she might as well concede.

At least, she told herself, GiGi wasn’t trying to talk her out of having a baby on her own anymore, even if the elderly woman didn’t like the idea.

Jani just hoped her grandmother didn’t think that this project with Gideon Thatcher would keep her from pursuing the baby issue. Because she wouldn’t let that—or anything else—get in her way. She would just schedule her appointments with the infertility doctor around whatever she had to do with the oh-so-good-looking man who saw her as the enemy. She wasn’t going to cancel or postpone anything.

“Okay, you win,” Jani said over a spoonful of the soup. “But this Thatcher guy isn’t going to settle for only a park in his great-grandfather’s name. He threw that back in my face. If he agrees to let us do something, it’s going to have to be bigger. Probably a lot bigger.”

GiGi shrugged. “Fine. Do whatever it takes to find out how much damage H.J. did, and if we can do more for the Thatchers themselves to make it up to them. Whatever he wants.”

“What he wants is a Camden head on a platter.”

GiGi slid out of the breakfast nook with her empty water glass in one hand. As she passed by the side of the nook where Jani was sitting, she took Jani’s chin in her free hand, and tipped Jani’s face upward for close scrutiny the way she had when Jani was just a little girl.

“I don’t believe any man would want to take you apart, my darling. You make an old woman jealous.”

Jani laughed. “GiGi,” she chastised when her grandmother released her face and went to the refrigerator, “you’ve always said you were perfectly content with the way you are—that you’d rather be happy than hungry or all dolled up. Now you’ve changed your mind? Maybe because of your new old boyfriend?”

During the first of these projects to make amends, Jani’s brother Cade had put GiGi back into contact with GiGi’s first love, Jonah Morrison. GiGi and Jonah had been high school sweethearts in Northbridge, Montana, where they’d both been raised. The young couple had split up after graduation, and GiGi had subsequently met and married Hank Camden.

But now that both GiGi and Jonah were widowed and coincidentally living in Colorado, they’d reconnected, and they were seeing each other again. Dat-ing—although GiGi complained that she was too old to call it that.

GiGi laughed as she refilled her water glass. “My new old boyfriend,” she repeated. “Is that what you’re all calling Jonah?”

“That’s what he is, isn’t he?”

“I don’t think a man Jonah’s age can be called a ‘boyfriend.’”

“Your new old suitor? Is that better?”

“You just tend to the man you’re supposed to be tending to and don’t worry about what to call Jonah,” GiGi advised.

“You might be tending to Jonah, but I’m not tending to any man anymore, let alone the angry Gideon Thatcher,” Jani corrected. “I’m just doing what you want me to do—trying to get close enough, often enough, to find some things out about him and his family. I’m not doing anything that might qualify as tending to him,” she insisted.

“Does he look as good in person as he did in that newspaper picture?” GiGi asked as she slid back into the nook with her refilled glass. “That hardhat he was wearing made it impossible to tell some things—like without it, is he bald and lumpy-headed?”

“No…He has hair,” Jani said, instantly picturing Gideon Thatcher in her mind’s eye. It was something that had been happening incessantly since she’d left him on the street the evening before, dragging her into alarmingly involuntary daydreams…

“He has very nice hair,” she went on. “Actually, that picture of him in the paper didn’t do him justice. And neither did the ones of him on his website. He has great hair—kind of a sandy-brown—”

“Is it neat and clean or does he look like he needs a haircut the way Reggie always did?”

“It’s neat and clean. But not so neat that he looks stuffy or severe.”

“Clean-shaven or scruffy?”

“Clean-shaven.” Leaving that sharply chiseled jawline and that sexy off-center dent in his chin clearly visible. Visible, and such a perfect match to the rest of his bone structure. His face was just rugged enough that he couldn’t be considered a pretty-boy—which is what GiGi had called Reggie.

“Is he a big man? He looked like a big man in that picture. Bigger than whoever that was he was shaking hands with,” GiGi commented.